Tradeoffs

All the "benefits" that people got from the oil that was pulled out of that hole in the ocean and refined, like driving to the mall, watching television, having plastic bags and making pointless shit at work, could never justify snuffing the life of even one bird.

Oil clumps seabirds' feathers, leaving them without insulation — and when they preen, they swallow it. Prolonged contact with the skin can cause burns, said Nils Warnock, a spill recovery supervisor with the California Oiled Wildlife Care Network at the University of California-Davis. Oil swallowed by animals can cause anemia, hemorrhaging and other problems, said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center in California.

The bird has no idea what's going on. It's trying to clean itself because it knows it's dirty, but it's killing itself through that cleaning.

This suffering is the saddest thing in the world to me right now.

We did that. We will keep doing it. It will happen again and again, until we have used all of the oil, we no longer have the means by which to extract it, or we are dead. Which will come first?